Survival And Military Based Techniques.

Survival and military based techniques.

One of the problems that I foresee is that so many people have the idea that military methods will be the way to go in a post apocalyptic survival situation. This comes from the experiences that some have had from military service but even more from people watching movies and TV.

I'm not saying that there isn't a lot of great information and knowledge from military methods and gained from service but you have to understand that the military philosophy has very little to do with individual survival. Acceptable casualty rates while a necessary part of military planning just doesn't work as well for a small family much less a solo or couple.

Even in their choice of weapons and equipment there is this cookie cutter mass-produced philosophy. If you can make the people have almost identical skills and abilities then if you lose a few it isn't a problem.

Don't get me wrong. This is how any decent military has to operate and it WORKS for fishing wars and even to a lesser extent for use in “police actions”. It allows the powers that are above to move their chess pieces around the board and know what each piece will do.

I've watched the problem with this on several survival shows where even special forces trained military people struggled while seemingly much less skilled or trained people seems to flourish. After a while I began to realize that a lot of it was that the more highly trained a military person is the more they rely on a system of thought and actions that while wonderful for platoon sized and larger groups actions just don't translate well into individual survival.

One show that jumps to mind form was one in which a giant special forces marine was teamed up with a blond little young lady that was sort of a flower child that believed that survival was best done by sort of being one with nature. They butted heads almost from the start.

They were dumped among several South Seas Islands with the simple objective of surviving for 21 days with extremely minimal supplies and no clothes. The Marine was extremely goal oriented and attacked everything with military precision and enthusiasm while the little hippie did things like make hats and umbrellas out of fronds.

She found some coconuts and so wasn't too worried about digging a well or hunting for pigs for food. Mostly she liked to beach comb and see what the seas offered up to her and mostly sort of enjoy the little vacation.

OK, the Marine was so busy building a shelter and doing all manner of things that he didn't take care of his personal needs. Marines wear uniforms and dress in certain ways. In short order his snow white butt and chest was COOKED!! The little brown sun tanned Hippie was doing great. Even with her tan she had made a big sombrero type hat and an umbrella and wasn't even sweating much.

For about 4 days that Marine was sick as a DOG and the little girl took care of him and kept him hydrated with coconuts. As soon as he was better he decided that they needed water and so he started digging a well in a low spot. He actually found water a few feet down. According to the girl is didn't smell very good and she passed on it he was mad about her attitude and drank a bunch of it. That night he was hit with raging diarrhea and was sick as a dog for another 4 or 5 days . The girl took care of him and even beach combed up some clothes for him and a can that they could boil the water in. Mostly though she was happy to live on coconuts and palm hearts and a few various easily found bits of sea life.

In the end the Marine chilled out and after that they did great but if she hadn't been there he would have died. He was too goal oriented and “tough” to take care of himself even with her telling him that he needed to get out of the sun. The other thing that was hard for him and for several other military people that I've seen on various shows is that most military people have very specific answers and tools for nearly all situations. The problems start when none of these tools are on hand and the people they are with won't either obey orders or dive into everything with the gunge-ho attitude that they expect.

The dynamics of the military are seldom very adaptable at first in group actions. This is necessary to avoid total chaos. If you plan to survive as part of a group that is much larger than 20 adults there is lots of good to be said for military techniques as long as you don't carry it too far. But for small group's all it is going to do is cause fights and dissension. Unfortunately most regular people are not going to make very good little soldiers in a survival situation.

An AR-15 in its M-16 form is a good weapon for achieving military objectives. It has light ammo, isn't as immediately deadly as larger calibers and causes lots of casualties and after several incarnations is a very dependable weapon. The thing is that it is designed for VERY specific objectives.

It has all of the problems that the military has built into its people unfortunately when looked at as a survival weapon. Power wise it is designed in a power range that is mostly either too powerful or too weak for hunting objectives. While it will kill deer sized animals it doesn't have good single shot take down power. On the other hand it is pretty massive over kill for shooting squirrels and bunnies. Defensively it isn't a quick killer and when someone is trying to hurt you you are not interested in just wounding them. Offensively it is a problem for the same reason. Another issue with it is that it is an ammo eating monster because most people just can't resist ripping off several rounds for everything.

The weapon like the military is very dependent on regular supply lines and a steady supply of replacement ammunition. Just as the men are dependent on immediate medical evacuation and treatment their tools, vehicles and weapons are VERY dependent of their supply lines. If you will look at their vehicles you will find that they are MASSIVE gas guzzling monsters that require a lot of maintenance to keep in good running order. But that is OK for the military because for every soldier that they put in the field they have four working in support for them. More wars and battles are lost because of bad logistics than bad tactics.

The problem with going at survival in or with a military frame of mind is that it is doomed from the beginning because there is no backup, support or logistics. It is just you with what you have and maybe what you can scrounge up later but you need to base your plans on the reality of what you HAVE or can do.

In the military you take a lot of chances because you have an objective that someone above you had decided that you need to get it done. You also know that if the poop hits the propeller that you can call in all different sorts of assistance, reinforcements, air strikes, artillery, extraction or medivac are all back up options.

Your equipment is the best stuff possible for short term use and ease of carry. The stuff that you carry off when bugging out might have to last you a lifetime. Your point of view might need to be rather different. For example, while a military trenching tool is pretty handy, you might be better off carrying a shovel head and then making it a handle when you settled. The same may be true for an ax and hoe. I have dug holes with a trenching tool and it is not a great tool for moving a lot of dirt in a hurry.

In the military the objective is to win. In survival a win is when you wake up alive the next day. The best way to do that is to limit your exposure to danger. People now days just can't imagine how many people used to die from basic simple cuts and scratches. We are not talking about things that needed stitches. Even a small cut that gets infected can make you savagely sick and possibly kill you if it goes to far into your system. Men used to die from shaving cuts. The difference that antibiotic everything has made is wildly vast. Antibiotic soaps, ointments, pills and shots have all but eliminated this from our worries. Even if you have some stored understand the day may come when the last is used.

What I'm getting at in the above is that a fearless full speed ahead attitude is great for a soldier and wins wars but for you caution and careful more thoughtful moves will be better. Even little critters can hurt you. I used to hunt squirrels a lot. My hunting jacket had a pouch in the back where you could store your kills. Great idea until one day a freaking pissed off squirrel woke up back there. I ended up going hand to hand with that little sucker and it was ugly. I got bit and clawed and was close to needing a change of drawers!! Evidently I had just grazed him and knocked him off the limb and he was knocked out by the fall. Without antibiotics this could have been ugly. I learned a lot though. After that I gutted any animal before it when into that pouch. You can't be fearless and expect to survive for long.

Depending on where you live military clothing might not be your best choice. Camo UNIFORMS along with being to make you harder so see are also to identify you. In some areas this may make some people nervous. Where I live camo is as common as plaid on lumberjacks for men, women, kids and furniture and even trucks... but I doubt this is so everywhere.

You basically don't want to stand out or attract attention to yourself by being different, notable or scary looking. The post apocalyptic period will not be a good place or time for gang colors or gang tats, droopy drawers or loud vulgar talking. If you bring your bad self into my area I may just kill you and be done with it.

Just give it all a little thought.

 

So, the military side of SHTF training has been discussed.

When a young man, I was close friends with guys who were through-hikers, super-serious, weeks in the mountains, hundreds of miles, fractured feet, outdoors-men. Me, I liked to hike and camp, but I was in nowhere near as good of shape as them. Me, I'm a small community sort of guy; will be same come SHTF.

If one plans on surviving out in the middle of Mother Nature's turf, then Brother, Sister, you'd better be up to what that mean Woman can dish out. Mother Nature is one savage, never tiring, apocalypse du jour. If you've not already been out in the boonies for weeks on end, time after time, then you got some serious prepping to do. Not an athlete? You're dead.

 

I totally agree. The idea of running into the woods and going Rambo/Davy Crockett is just not realistic for 99.9% of people. Even back win the old days, say anything before 1800, it just wasn't something that many could or wanted to do. The very few that did either died and were never heard from again or they became the stuff of legends. Even the legends were more pulp novel creations than reality. Living with a native American tribe is not even close to just going hermit in the woods.

Mother nature is a heartless witch and when every day is another opportunity for you to make a mistake and die the odds eventually get you. When you are alone nearly anything can kill you. You need to understand this sad fact...In the primitive societies made up of people that knew how to survive and be a part of nature in ways we can't conceive the average life expectancy was 35 years or so and a 45 to 50 year old man was truly OLD! Even without all the special problems that have millions of people in the woods doing crazy stuff most modern people will be little more than dead men walking.

It wasn't until people settled down into towns and solid communities or villages that life became easier and more likely to live anything close to what we now consider a "normal" life expectancy. Men are just not designed to be solitary predators.

If you will look at nature and the animals that ARE designed to be solitary predators you will note that they one and all are equipped with massively deadly tools to work with. Claws, Fangs, Venom, Thick tough hide, Speed, night vision, built in camouflage... you name it and they have it.

We have none of it! What we have instead is the ability to work together and a brain that has allowed us to create THINGS that give us most of these abilities. What you have to get is that all of these THINGS are created by and dependent on the urban factories and such to keep it going. Nearly everything past the stone age was the result of "civilization" of some sort and that requires people working together. Good hunters and farmers made it so that others could sit around and make these things instead of each man, woman and child having to work and toil constantly to provide the necessities of life.

 

How to describe our own species has been a challenge for us humans. We are a VERY different critter. I'm brave, let me give this a go:

We are a pack-forming, tool-making, fire-loving, stubborn-unto-death mammal.

The Universe was designed to evolve us ... and most likely other sentient beings on other planets. The Will of the Universe ("God", create a name, doesn't matter) wished to look in a mirror and witness Itself. This Will interacting with absolute nothingness caused an explosion of unknowable proportions. We love fire for we were born of it and are today sustained by a fusion bomb in the sky. We build our fires at night and worship our moon that has our face on it. By day we hunt. Hunting burns the need to seek into our brains. Insatiable seeking lead us into the practices of science and religion. As we begin to postpone our own deaths, people who die then survive inform us that even death doesn't kill our souls. We are not only roaches in this world, we pass on into other realms spiritually unstoppable. And God doesn't get out the bug spray. He allows this. He creates other universes, each just one bubble in a swarm of fizzy bubbles in His glass. Hyper-expansion. Ho, ho, ho!



It's all a knotty question
https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2017/10...n-explain-why-the-world-is-three-dimensional/



Happy Holidays!

 

We have to look at the information that’s given to the lads and girls who risk there life’s for us. Military training is locate observation and evade.or in gage But survival military training is taught to the troops by top survival experts on how to stay alive in harsh conditions. Not a comfy armchair! Lofty wiseman to name but one. Any sort of training and repetition of this sort or any would give them an edge on survival imho

 

The problem with the military method for a survivalist is that it is totally objective oriented. Individual survival is basically irrelevant. It is also based on being part of an entire system. There are supplies provided and resupplied. You are familiar with the weapons and tools that you use because they are standardized. You have backup and can call in reinforcements or an air strike. The injured, if they survive the immediate wound, are medevaced and repaired. All of this is taken for granted and bravery is a form of aggression that is encouraged.

In a survival situation in a post apocalyptic world. If you get hurt you will have to deal with it yourself or die. Nothing is going to be predictable and you are going to have to constantly adapt. The line between "bravery" and "stupidity" in a survival situation can be razor thin. The OBJECTIVE in survival is to live another day. Any other objective needs to be carefully analyzed and the value weighed against the risk. Even as a group the decisions are not going to be best led by one way militaristic thought patterns.

It is like the thing with the assault weapons. The military is all about assaulting their objectives. If I am trying to survive I will be MUCH more defensively minded than assaultive. That means I want a weapon that STOPS an attacker and I have no interest in causing casualties. Offensive weapons don't generally make the best defensive weapons. Assault weapons require you to get way to involved with having a firefight. I would much rather either not fight or if you force me then I would rather have a high powered rifle with a good scope. If I'm set in place and you are attacking me. I'll let you get close and then take a shotgun to you....then leave!

Military training will offer you a LOT of valuable tools and knowledge. The thing is that you have to understand that your goals and methods can't be in that line. You can't afford an injury if there is no doctors and hospital. You can't waste because there will be no certainty of resupply. You don't want to assault anyone. Instead you need to avoid conflict if at all possible. If conflict is obviously unavoidable you need to act FIRST in an immediate and very final manner. Your rules of engagement are simple...be the survivor!

 

I agree to a point there objections are to stay as a unit....them first attitude! Which is fine when training and at war. So what happens when the individual is free from orders but still has the knowledge? Understandably these people are full of confidence and have a need for adrenaline and this is what we see in a younger bear grills before he was a celeb.

My observation of military training is just that an observation as I have no military experience.
The Military have top survivalist training there men and for most part perfected a training system that hold on to an individual For life.

For me I look at people like David Canterbury who would most likely survive an apocalyptic world his military training has served him well. His attitude has changed over the years though..... from when I discovered him on dual survival to his online channel at present. Proof in the pudding for me

I don’t think it matters where the training comes from just as lone as it’s had!

Personally... I’m all for sitting back looking at the problem then reacting. All for taking my time so not to cause myself a mechanical injury. However I would like to balance that out with quick decision making. Not easy for me lol .

 

I am a fan of survivorman, http://www.lesstroud.ca/survivorman/. in this show they drop in off in anywhere and he has to survive with what he has on him. he has taught me alot. also i am a fan of alone the tv show.